Page 177 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

62 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

The balloon of Vincent Lunardi, which he launched in
London, England in September 1784, thereby
introducing ballooning to England.

passing over a wing gener- and because without the subsidy the airlines would have
ated lift, while surfaces on gone bankrupt.
the craft manipulated some By contrast, the United States was more restrained
of the air, providing direc- about direct government subsidies for commercial ven-
tional control—all of this sus- tures; lacking a major sponsor, the airplane remained
tained by an engine that something of an orphan.The U.S. government did offer
provided thrust. financial support through the airmail system, and private
For the next eleven years the airplane was a solution companies flew the airmail and an occasional paying pas-
in search of a problem: No one seemed to know what to senger, but little effort was made to cater to passenger
do with it. Even at the start of World War I, aviation’s po- traffic.A pivotal moment for aviation came in 1930 with
tential remained unclear—at least to the generals. But its the restructuring of the method by which companies were
flexibility soon became apparent, and the airplane found paid for the mail they carried. Rather than paying strictly
many roles in the war: air-to-air fighter, bomber, and ob- by the weight of the mail, the new formula factored in
servation platform. internal volume. This spurred aircraft manufacturers to
War often leads to rapid technological advances.At the design new and larger planes able to carry passengers in
start of World War I most airplanes were at least biplanes enclosed cabins. Although the ruling applied only in the
—two wings—and were built of wood and fabric.Yet by United States, it had ramifications the world over, for it
war’s end the Fokker company was producing airplanes led to the modern commercial airliner.
with welded steel truss fuselages, while the Junkers com- The airplane demonstrated its value in less developed
pany built monoplanes made entirely of metal. Speed, parts of the world as well. Companies in South America
range, and reliability increased as well.And while the first employed single-engine airplanes such as the Junkers F-
four-engine airplane predated the war (Russian designer 12 to reach remote outposts, while French Latecoeres car-
Igor Sikorsky’s Russky Vitaz), multiengine bombers of ried mail from Europe down the west coast of Africa, and
colossal size were fairly common by the end of it. even across the Atlantic to Brazil.

The Interwar Years—Dawn Technological
of Commercial Aviation Developments
In the period between the two world wars aviation’s com- Although wood as an aircraft construction material had
mercial potential blossomed. Not only did planes fly pas- a long tradition, metal as an aircraft material grew in both
sengers, they carried freight, mail, entertainers, and popularity and use. This stemmed from several things:
explorers. At the same time the airplane’s use expanded new knowledge about the properties of metal; new
from within the industrialized world to encompass the alloys; cultural embrace of a new material (such as dura-
entire globe. lumin) in place of an old one (wood); and aircraft acci-
Europeans were the first to establish regular, lasting dents blamed on a failed wooden components.
commercial aviation. Many of the large, multiengine air- The development of the stressed-skin (monocoque)
planes that survived the war were modified to carry pas- fuselage increased the useful internal volume of the air-
sengers.Using these,several European nations established craft.A monocoque fuselage is a shell in which the loads
national airlines offering service within the continent.Still carried by the aircraft in flight are borne by the fuselage’s
possessing colonies around the world, these powers saw skin. (An aluminum or composite canoe is an example of
the airplane as a fast way to move people to and from their a monocoque shell.)
possessions. They subsidized the airlines because they First proposed by a Frenchman in 1871, the idea of a
were flagships—demonstrations of prestige and power— variable-pitch propeller was impractical until aircraft rou-